The Three Times Neji Blushes
by DawningAurora
Summary: There were only three times in his entire life that Neji was flustered enough to blush and unsurprisingly all of those times involved a certain brunette.


Disclaimer-I'm a little too young and a little too female to be Kishimoto.

Pairing-NejiTen.

Secret Genre-Crack.

Warnings- Complete murder of English grammar and OOC-ness.

* * *

**...**

**At Six.**

**...**

Neji was waking home placidly when his overloaded weaponry pouch ripped and spilled all his weapons. Sighing, he bent down to retrieve all his fallen weapons when-

_-Riiip-_

His favourite pair of Hakama pants ripped… He bolted up and his hands automatically went to cover the rip in his pants. He looked around to see that _thankfully_ the quiet little side street was empty. It was humiliating to be seen in his favourite pair of Mickey Mouse knickers. He was mentally tracing the best route towards the Hyuga estate that didn't involve a lot of people when the sound of muffled laughter met his ears. He whipped around to see a tiny, little brown haired female laughing at him. His cheeks warmed and his heart pounded as he glared mutinously at her. When she saw him, she clamped her lips together tighter and laughed harder.

Blushing redder and more furiously, he turned around and stalked off in the opposite direction. "Wait!" a voice still filled with laughter called out. He stilled for a moment, vacillating indecisively between stalking off and turning around.

In the meantime the girl caught up with him. She slipped her backpack off and she rummaged through it for a full minute before retrieving something with a _Hah! _She looked up at him and handed him a pair of pants.

"Sorry about laughing at you. Here. You can use these. My Dad said it's good to make peas offerings when making friends. I don't have any peas with me so… here." She thrust the pants into his hands.

Neji still looked at the odd female before him. He had never met a girl who could say anything to him besides squealing his name. He grudgingly took the pants with a gruff thanks.

"Who are you?" he asked

"My dad says you shouldn't ask for other people's names before telling yours" she returned in a sing song voice.

Neji raised his eyebrow the way his father sometimes used to. "I'm Hyuga Neji," he said evenly, "and you are?"

The girl broke into a wide toothed smile and said "I'm Tenten. Let's be Mickey-Mouse –knicker buddies, K?"

Neji sweat dropped.

He never met anyone like Tenten before and he was certain he maybe, kinda, sorta liked her. He meant liked that _about_ her.

**...**

**At Nine**

**...**

The next time Neji saw Tenten was at the academy. She was sitting by the window in her favourite yellow shirt and when she saw him she waved cheerfully and waved him towards the empty seat beside her. Without consciously making the decision, he made a beeline for it; just as he was close, a guy with shiny, long, braided hair slides in and sits next to Tenten and starts chattering away at her in Chinese in loud, enthusiastic tones. Tenten laughs and chatters back for quite a while before jumping up with her mouth in a silent "o". She turns to Neji apologetically and is about to apologise when he shrugs and settles himself at the edge of the bench.

Tenten introduces the boy next to her as "Rock Lee" and then introduces him to Lee. She thankfully omits the endearment "Knicker Buddies" this time.

Neji decides then and there that he doesn't like Lee. At all! But for Tenten's sake, he'd put up with the boy.

The lessons for the day started leaving them with no chance to talk. During break, Lee runs out of the class. Tenten had bet with him that he wouldn't be able to find Kekkali blossoms this late in spring. Lee had insisted that he saw a clump of bushes in full bloom. He'd gone to pick one as proof that they were there. Tenten had laughingly gone after him.

When Neji decided to find Tenten, it was because he wanted to get away from all the girls in class and brush up on his trail-reading skills and not because he wanted to check up on her or anything. Right. So he walked off in the direction she had taken. He walked for quite a while before he heard a whimper come from a little ways ahead of him. He rushed ahead, forgetting every single thing that his father had drilled into his head about never charging head long into battle. As he came into view, he saw Lee standing before three hulking chunin with his balled fists raised and eyebrows furrowed. Tenten was nowhere to be seen. A part of him relaxed. He went to take up a place by Lee's side. The biggest of the three said "Well, well, well, what do we have 'ere boys? Another pretty face to play with."

The lackey on the left smirked at Neji. "Leave this little girl to me."

Neji slipped into his fighting stance.

The chunin raised his fist and as about beat Neji up when a voice stopped him.

"Oi! Leave my boyfriend alone!" Tenten said. Her hands were on her hips and she was glaring at the chunin.

"Boyfriend? You mean that little lady down there?" guffawed the big chunin. Neji felt himself turn red for the second time in his life. "Don't call me that" he snapped at Tenten.

The glare turned towards him.

"Alright, don't get yer knickers in a knot," she said as she turned the glare towards the chunin who was about to punch Neji before adding, "You heard the guy. Leave my girlfriend alone!"

Neji spluttered as all three chunin started laughing. They ended up letting them go and the big chunin ruffled Tenten's hair and asked her to "Not let her _girlfriend_ cause her too much trouble"

**...**

**At Thirteen.**

**...**

Despite all his wishes and hopes, Lee was also put in the team with Tenten and himself. Neji sighed internally. Of all the people who could be put into his team, it had to be Lee who had joined. The one good thing about this was the fact that they had this new teacher that Lee idolised. To him, it translated to more time Lee sent with teacher was less time sent with Tenten. Neji had this odd little catalogue of Neji-Tenten time and Lee-Tenten time. Lately the scales had been tipping heavily towards the Lee-Tenten time than the Neji-Tenten time, which made for one _very _grumpy Hyuga. This carried on for quite a while, until "One Day". Until one fine, beautiful day when he threw away the catalog. That "One Day" had been on Tenten's thirteenth birthday. Neji had been led to believe it was a very important day in the life of females apparently, second important only to the sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays and also fourteenth, fifteenth and seventeenth birthdays.

The Hyuga Tensai spent over a month mulling over possibilities and managing to procure a sizable mountain of gifts that seemed appropriate in the shop but not in his room. "_It must have been the lighting in the room,"_ he thought to himself, _"or a secret shopaholic tendency"_ came a snide voice in his head. Glaring down at the voice, Neji decided to go look for better gifts tomorrow.

He didn't get a better gift the next day, or the one after that and so on until three days before her birthday. When "The Idea" took hold of him. He gulped and decided to see it through, it was an all-or-nothing kind of gift.

And so the evening of Tenten's birthday party drew near until it was actually time to go. Neji fiddled uneasily with the collar of his shirt as he waited for the door to open. Tenten answered the door. She looked quite lovely in her brilliant crimson quipao. She had her hair done up in true Mandarin style with the buns neatly in place and a veritable waterfall of silken hair spilling down from her up-do, framing her face lovingly.

"You're early" she beamed at him.

Neji gulped and thrust the bouquet of roses into her hand before mumbling something. Neji never mumbles. Not even in a poison-exhaustion-fever induced state. Tenten looked at him with wide eyes. She raised one head to his forehead and one to hers to check his temperature. Neji took a fortifying breath before saying-

"I wanted to give you your gift beneath the cherry blossom tree. Will you come with me there?" he asked, not quite meeting her eyes as his cheeks warmed. They walked to the tree in silence with Tenten casting worried glances at Neji under her lashes and wondering if she should maybe ask Ibiki to look in on Neji. Neji for his part, remained as skittish as a colt. When they reached the Sakura tree that Tenten got for her second birthday, Tenten stopped and turned expectantly towards him.

Wiping his sweaty palms discreetly within his pockets, he tried to look non chalant. He breathed deeply before asking Tenten to close her eyes. The last thing he saw before her lashes fluttered shut was the confusion painting her eyes. He bent slowly, savouring every moment of his gift, before his lips pressed softly over hers-once, twice, and three times before her eyes flew open in shock.

Neji held his breath for her reaction. Her cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes shone bright with mirth before she said "You call that a kiss, Hyuga?" and proceeded to kiss the socks off of him.

* * *

Fin.

It was meant to be 100% crack but turned into complete mush half way though. Hope you liked my brand of humor... If it is, in fact, humor... XP

Reviews are food for the literary soul and I'm one starving authoress... :)

-Aurora


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